You Don't Have The Right To Exist

When the topic of abortion comes up, many who defend the killing of children bring up the issue of conception via rape.

Of course sexual assault is traumatic. Any type of forced or unwanted sexual intrusion is a violation of one's human dignity. On the other hand, coming to life is not a violation of human dignity. Instead, it's a celebration of human dignity. As the saying goes, 

“If it isn't a human life, you aren't pregnant!”

 

Pregnancy is the most natural and biologically intended consequence of sexual intercourse in every animal alive. Despite that, conception, on average, occurs only once in every seventeen thousand sexual assaults. That it's a relative rarity does not diminish the horror of the event for the victim. But is that the child's fault? Should the child be torn limb from limb or have it's brain sucked out as it exits the vagina because someone else committed the assault? Should life be denied because of the sin that someone else committed?

Many people think so. Many people think that those children, conceived in rape should die.

I have something to say about that. All of our seven adopted children were conceived during drunken encounters. None of them were planned. All but one have sustained permanent brain damage from their mother's drinking while pregnant. They're a load. A load on our marriage, on the school system, the medical system and someday at least one may very well become a load on the justice system. All more than enough reason for some people to say that the lives of these children should have been terminated.

Beyond that, two of my daughters were conceived during sexual assaults. I'm not going to use the usual descriptions (beautiful, intelligent, vibrant etc.) because it implies that if they weren't those things it would somehow change the situation. But I have to tell you, if someone came up to either one of my daughters, looked them in the eye and said that because they were the consequence of rape:

. they don't deserve to live,

. they should have been killed,

. they shouldn't have been born,

. it would have been better for society if they had been aborted because someone sexually assaulted their mothers, I'd be very tempted to lay some hurt on that person.

I'm in a discussion right now with someone who in all probability thinks those very thoughts – about my children! Only in the first trimester of course.

I can't imagine loving these girls any more than I do, and for someone to suggest that they shouldn't exist because of how they started, just as though how they began determines how they'll end, seems like insanity to me.